Nifty News

Faithful Followers

Thursday, November 29, 2007

I got a laptop. Hooray. The problem is - these keys are so small! Typing is so strange. It will take me 4 years to finish my book at this rate. And the little touch pad thing? OY! Now that I have a laptop, I figured I could sit out here in the family room with my husband instead of hiding away in my bedroom to write. Well, I've made it about 15 minutes. I'm ready to head back to my room. Know why? He's eating ice cream and making gross lip smacking noises and crunching chocolate chunks and scraping his bowl with his spoon. I swear I need a 12 step program to learn to deal with this.

Not only is he eating ice cream, but he's watching a stupid show on the History channel. I now know everything I never wanted or needed to know about cell phones. Oh wait - it's a commercial now. Time to pick up the remote control and start flipping. UGH! Why? Why do men do this? Seriously. Is it just a lack of attention thing? Is it that they always have to see if there's something better out there? Is it just to avoid commercials? Why? Why the constant channel flipping?

Back to the cell phone show. Did you know that AT&T stands for American Telephone and Telegraph company. Now you do.

Ugh, I've got to go check on the crash I just heard...

I'm back. I have no idea what the crash was. It's taken me about an hour to get back to this post because I have a procrastination problem. I just wasted almost an hour by playing this game. Yes, it's true, when I can't think of anything to write, I go play stupid games online. (I especially like Spider Solitaire.) Anyway, I'm back and still can't think of anything to write and now they're talking about bear traps on TV and my husband is snoring away. Can you hear it from there? No, that's not a plane flying overhead. It's my husband snoring. Trust me. I'm contemplating putting a pillow over his face. There's something wrong with me. I think I need therapy.And I'm pretty sure sitting out here with the distractions of my husband and the TV is not a good idea. Back to plan A.

Dawn, your husband and mine must be related somehow...mine does the same thing, well not the ice cream thing but the T.V. thing if I have to watch another episode of some guy pouring cement on the top of some stupid building I am going to just explode, he is always watching things on either building things are how they make things...can you say BORING!!!And of course he is doing this in between falling asleep in his chair...so here I am watching the stupid show he picked out and he's asleep with of course the remote control in his hand...I have gotten real good at removing said remote without even waking him up and then I change the channel to something good like on Lifetime or something and then he wakes up and looks at the T.V and has a weird look on his face, like is this what I picked to watch???? Oh it is so much fun!!!!!!!! By the way I love your blog..keep the stories coming they are very entertaining..Blessings, Joann

OMG, our husbands must be related. Ice cream smacking, History Channel, Snoring. All of it.

Has your husband injured himself recently trying to be as active in sports as your kids? Mine has. He tore a tendon in his hand playing catch with the football about three months ago. The way he was complaining about things, you would have thought his hand was torn from his body. He ended up having to have surgery on the hand, with a pin put in his finger to hold it straight until the tendon can scar down - hopefully in the right area. I don't even want to be anywhere near him if the doctor finds out it didn't scar down right.

I don't know if it would help, but you could probably hook a regular keyboard to your laptop (if it has a USB connector and you have an extra USB port). Just a thought.

ROFL. I just wrote a 50,000 word novel in a month for NaNoWriMo. I couldn't have done it without my laptop (to probably hide from the masses) my headphones (to drown out their screams and cries for attention) and Pandora.com (for great tunage). Oh, and chocolate. How could I forget the chocolate? Good luck. I still have at least 50,000 words to go. But now that I discovered the secret ingredients to success (see above)then it should be easy right? Right??

Laptop keys, oy! And I wont even get into gross Husband eating noises. Speaking of, my hubby hates my mother forever for sending him the link to this online game:http://www.funnygames.nl/spelletjes/803.htmlkeep up the good work

Ohhh, I love Spider Solitaire!!! I'll probably play a game or 2 after going off line.

I know what you mean about the guys changing channels during commercials. My Dad does it, my husband does it. If I watch tv with either of them, I never see the show all the way through, because they never change back to the original show in time. Thankfully, my 14 year old son hasn't picked up that habit. I'll try to keep him from doing it to spare his future wife my tv viewing fate. So far, it drives him crazy too.

Oh and also, you will get used to your laptop keys, but if you hate your mouse (which my laptop has both the little button thing and the touch pad - both of which I hate with a vengeance because I feel like it takes forever to do anything and it's cumbersome), get a wireless USB mouse from Best Buy. It's about 20 bucks, but it's well worth it. One AA battery will last for 6 months, no joke. I use mine all day long.

when we bought our laptop.......i was so excited :) the freedom it brings. the first time i used it......i hated it! i begged my dh to return. thankfully, he refused. now, i love it :) it takes some getting used to. i think you'll love it. you can sit in your bed at night and ck your email, or sit in front of the tv and do it. also, on really nice days you can take it outside and out of one eye watch the kids playing and out of the other ck your mail :) or write a book!

I can definatly relate to the annoyance of the husband's eating. Sometimes it drives me insane and i have to tell myself that even though he sounds like pig,he's my husband and i love him ..i'm not going to throw things at his head to make the noise stop. and it's really not even that bad , there are just certain times it bothers me more than others.

my husband will also watch stupid shows that tell you the history of someboring thing or how it's made and wonder why i don't stay in the room to cuddle with him.Do you want to cuddle up and watch how a car engine is manufactured? I sure the heck don't.

when my husband snores at night, i grab his nose and wiggle it a lil bit.That usually works.

That is very cool that you got a laptop!!!! I am sure you will get used to it! My dad makes those REALLY weird noises when he is eating, and he also must be thinking as well because he mumbles about different things, and laughs when nobody is talking!

The remote-channel flipping thing is definitely a male attribute. Studies have been done on this.During the week, there are 3 shows that I INSIST on watching. I'm allowed to see these without channel changing, although L does mute the advertisements. All other shows, he has the remotes next to him on the couch or resting on his stomach if he is lying down. Every ad. break, the channels are flipped. I don't think he's ever watched a whole show from beginning to end. I made the transition to laptop last year when my desktop computer got fried by a virus. This one has virus protection which updates itself on a regular basis, and scans all files once a week to detect tracking cookies.

Oh my goodness - that is CLASSIC about the husband and the TV. It's the reason my computers (yes, plural) are in a separate room as the family TV. And the reason I have my own little TV and just enough channels to keep me happy in my office. :o)

Believe it or not my wife is sitting right behind me right now playing Spider Solitaire. She's so good she plays it with two suits. How many suits do you play the game with? (A deliberate attempt at getting a Sunday night question answered.)

By the way. SHE has the remote and were watching a FASHION SHOW on Bravo!!! Lord help me. AND we've watched every single stupid commercial that they've thrown at us. But at least we've not missed a single bit of fashion.

http://organizeddoodles.blogspot.com/

P.S. Was that your husband's snoring or my neighbor running his chain saw?

Hehe. Just wait until one of these days when you decide to "just" check your email on your laptop in the living room while the kids are still awake. Here's how it works:

Open laptop. Three year old picks fight with 21 month old over cup of water that is now all over both. Go break that up and get them both new shirts.

Sit back down on couch and click Get Mail button. Five year old decides she wants to listen to a book on tape, but wants to do it downstairs where you are instead of upstairs where her CD player on. She trucks it down the stairs, discovers the CD part doesn't work so she needs to go borrow her brother's player but she can't get the CD player she brought down back up the stairs. You go to help.

When you get back, the 21 month old is pushing buttons on your laptop because the pictures on the screensaver were so fascinating and hey, Mom pushes buttons (never EVER leave your laptop open in the same room that small children might ever be ever. Or just don't leave it open if you are more than 30 inches away).

CD player problem sorted out. You sit back down to actually maybe read your email. Nine year old brother discovers five year old sister with his CD player that she claims she asked him for permission to use and he says she didn't. Fight breaks out.

You wisely close laptop lid (and make sure no liquids are on the end table that your computer is on) and go to break up another fight. You get back and wait for laptop to boot back up so you can finish the first email that you had to leave halfway through reading.

Your seven year old daughter comes over to give you a hug and kiss and tell you she loves you. Then she asks if you would like to listen to her read her Betsy Tacy book and that you're going to LOVE it. An hour has passed since you decided to work downstairs and you have so far read two sentences of one email. You sigh and decide that remote control noises and snoring from your husband are easier to sit through than this, so you shut your laptop back down again and curl up with your daughter to listen to her reading.

I don't think flipping channels is just a male thing. I like to channel-surf in the ads too, because I can't stand watching ads... though sometimes I just mute the sound. I think channel-surfing is always bearable for the person holding the remote control and incredibly annoying for anyone else who has to watch it.

I should be in bed but just had to see what you'd written...I love Spider Solitaire, too. So I think you crashed the game site. I went to see what you play by the hour and can't get it to pull up. So everyone on the west coast at almost midnight just had to see what you played? Guess so!Now I'm off to bedzzzzzzzzzzzz

I have a laptop and work on it in the family living space. I end up watching Cage Fighting with my husband so at least you are learning something useful. I, on the other hand, am learning all about the Octagon and various holds. :) I actually love working on my laptop around the house because I can still care for the kids but get some other stuff done as well. I hope it works out for you. :)

Dawn, are you hanging out at my house? Everything you describe here fits us perfectly, except that my laptop is on the way and our tv is in the bedroom (where we thought it would be used less and encourage us to spend more time together as a family; instead, everyone goes to their room or the computer while one or two people camp out in my bedroom until I run them out... but I digress).

Did you know that you can attach a normal keyboard and a mouse to your laptop? My husband actually ordered a wireless mouse for mine. No, you can't type on your lap that way. But if you want to type in a room other than your bedroom, it would work. Your files/computer are all still portable, but your fingers won't go crazy trying to adapt.

BTW, you are not allowed to say that you will never complete your book. Too many of us already have it on next year's Christmas list (not to add any pressure or anything).

I've heard that you can plug a regular computer keyboard into your laptop to make the typing easier...of course I don't have a laptop so I don't really know, I've just heard. But seriously, you're probably better off using the computer in your bedroom, at least then your husband can live.

While I can assure you that you will get used to the laptop keyboard and be quick-like in no time--the other distractions, not so much LOL!Congrats on the laptop, though, you'll love being able to sit wherever whenever--except when trying to concentrate ;)

Dawn,I need to take a Dramamine before I sit down to watch T.V. with my husband. He clicks through the channels so fast, it makes me dizzy. Sometimes he changes the channel when I'm out of the room, and when I get back I have a very hard time following the story line because suddenly all of the characters have changed.What baffles me, is how he knows the EXACT moment that I actually become interested in a program, and then he changes the channel. ????I sometimes wonder if the gene that causes this behavior with the TV remote is related somehow to the gene that causes the "staring at the contents of the fridge for twenty minutes like some new great food is going to just magically appear before me" phenomenon.Someone should research that.Hey, we've been wondering what that noise was. Thanks for letting us know it was just snoring coming from your house.Jill

I must share a male gene. I am constantly flipping channels as soon as a commercial comes on. I think maybe it's boredom. Sometimes I forget what I was watching in the first place when I'm done cycling through the channels.

OMG,Dawn,the man you described is MY husband! Are we going to see him on Dateline? I've heard of these men who lead double lives and have two families. I never thought it would happen to me! By the way, I refer to The History Channel as The Hitler Channel. I tell him I could save him a lot of time and just tell him how that war ended.

I just got a new cell phone that has a keyboard on it you type with your thumbs. Talk about tiny keys. I have small hands, but how do people with fat thumbs do this? And so fast! I'm new to the IM world.

On your laptop, if you keep moving the mouse because your hand moves over the pad (not even touching it), try putting a post it over it. I used to have to do that when I worked in an office. It helped a lot. Drove me crazy. I also recommend an external mouse. I hate those pad things. What a pain.

The remote "flip flip flip" thing is a male trait, I believe. I found a remedy. Take out the batteries. I also understand the distraction thing. My train of thought derails enough on its own. To add any distractions to the mix, especially a family member who only means well, can really disrupt whatever I'm doing. I'd say go back to Plan A and git 'er done. Spend quality time with hubby, spend work time working. Separating the two makes each more enjoyable. Wow...I'm sounding profound this morning. Better stop before I scare myself too much. Have a great day!

OMG! I can't stand to watch tv with my husband! Yes, why why why do they need to flip so much! I know more about so many mundane things than one person should know. Do you know how they make gummy worms? I do. Do you know what to do if you are stranded in the desert with nothing but a dead camel? I do. Ugh. And he wonders why I retreat to our bedroom to watch tv at 8pm every night.

You need to buy a regular mouse or you will surely go crazy with the touchpad! Although, a mouse is not helpful if you are sitting with your computer in your lap, in which case I have no suggestions! :)

My husband drives me nuts when he is eating. He chews EVERYTHING. I know, chewing while eating is not so uncommon, right? But my husband takes this chewing thing to a whole new level. He chews on pudding. He chews on a bite of soggy cereal for like 5 minutes!! *gag* He chews on MILK for crying out loud! Hehe You know when you use one word over and over in a short time frame and it starts to sound funny to you. "Chew." Heehee Funny.

I don't like laptops, either. I'm told you have to get used to them, but how can you when everything is so tiny?

The clicker thing is inherent in the male psyche. They're hunters, and they no longer hunt and kill (well the sane ones don't, anyway), so they "hunt" with the clicker (I got this tidbit from "Defending the Caveman").

Ha! My husband does that too! Must be a guy thing. And the snoring? Thank god we don't have earthquakes here in Sweden, all those little instruments would go berserk when he starts sucking in all the air in the room trough his mouth. Or is it nostrils? Or maybe both?Take care!Julia in Sweden, constant sneak-reader

Try this-put a CD of music (or white noise) that you like & that won't distract you into the laptop's drive, and use headphones. Then you can still be in the room with your husband and not have to hear the stupid TV shows or the gross husband/man sounds. ;-)And the keyboard? Your fingers will adjust after a while, and you'll get used to the trackpad,too.

This blog is therapy as the advice you will get is sound advice from people who have gone through it or are going through it now.

You're not crazy. We all are in this huge looney bin together, trying to make it one day at a time, right along our snoring husbands. I a glad to know that your drives you crazy with lip smacking sounds too. I cannot be in the same room as mine when he is eating bananas. It's a terible sound!

Dawn, I relate to EVERYTHING you said in this post!! :-) It's amazing--I don't understand the channel changing either. And the scraping of the bowl! Yikes! Maybe there is a subconscious fear of starvation??

Now, as to the laptop -- I finally learned to use one just great! It takes a while. It's slower to navigate, I think, with the touch pad, sooooo, I got a mouse to use! It is "remote" in that it is not attached to the laptop. Great little idea! Now, I'm just as comfortable on the laptop as I am on the desktop, and it makes switching back and forth much easier!

I love my laptop! I hate the little touch pad thing too. I finally got a little mouse. You ought to get a little mouse and turn off the touch pad thing. It will make your life easier. You'll get used to the small keys eventually. You will never get used to the touch pad...

LOL!! I hope your husband survived the night! I know what you mean about the bowl and spoon thing....that same thing drives me crazy ....am I that noisy when I eat?!?!?! Congrats on the new laptop. I hope you get used to using it...just think, now you could hide in a closet and play on the computer all day = ) YEAH RIGHT!!! Nice thought huh!?!?!?! Have a great day!

Wow, can I ever relate to your post. I tried a laptop and find it very awkward to type-I'm much happier on my desktop PC keyboard. And like you, I thought it would be nice to sit and watch tv with my husband while working on my blog....wrong....I'm not good at multi-tasking as it turns out- everything disturbs my train of thought. So I spend hours in my little room with my PC, but then when I'm through, I can enjoy my husband and my pets and relax. Very nice blog you have.Chris

Sometimes you can use a regular keyboard in place of the little ones that laptops come with. - I KNOW that it seems a little ridiculous but HEY, WHATEVER WORKS! - You usually can buy docking stations also. - You might want to look into one. Thank you for making my life much brighter!

My darling husband loves to stir his ice cream. First he needs to put his bowl of ice cream in the sink with a little hot water around it to make it softer. Then, he has to sit there and stir and clank his spoon against the sides for about 10 minutes. After that, he proceeds to take huge bites and smack his gums because it's still too cold. I HATE ICE CREAM because of this. I have gone on an ice cream buying strike. If he wants it bad enough, he has to go buy it himself. THANKS FOR LETTING ME RANT. I feel much better now.

You need to get a wireless mouse! I hate that touch pad do hickey too!! I wouldn't trade anything for my wireless mouse.. and it's cutie pink. I so feel your pain on the husband thing. Every night, same thing. Flip, flip, flip through 50 different things. (Why can't he use the tv guide channel thing on the screen like I do?) Why does he flip because he's going to end up on History, Golf or Western?! Then after 30 minutes he's snoring in the chair. I sneak over to change the channel and it's "I WAS WATCHING THAT!" Hmmm.... I could tell - Men, whatcha' gonna do with 'em???!!!! :)

You are not alone...my husband eats cereal around 9 pm each and every night. Not in a regular cereal bowl but my vegetable bowl. I say 'my' vegetable bowl b/c I don't think he really understands what a vegetable bowl is. Oh, the noise he makes when he eats - it drives me up the wall. Smack, slurp, clank on the VEGETABLE BOWL!!! I really should drink more! The sad part is my 4 year old has now gotten into the habit of eating cereal before going to bed. How do I break this cycle - his poor future wife!

If there were a 12 step program for learning to deal with gross eating noises, I would be the first to sign up. Ice cream is bad, cereal is a form of torture and the sound of eating bananas might just drive me into a murderous rage.

If we had the answer to why men flip channels we could write a book!! (Oh wait - you already are - LOL) My husband says it's because he can't stand seeing commercials, I think it's because he tries to irritate me :)!For another game try www.nabisco.com - cornnuts is fun! Diane in SC

Haha! Sorry about the distraction problem, and the husband snoring, AND the TV flipping. I work from home and am CONSTANTLY online...but once I got a laptop, my "constantly" turned into 24/7 so beware. It's much too easy to sit on the laptop while the kids are watching TV, eating breakfast, or hiding various food objects around the house.

Congrats on the laptop though. Another day or two and you'll have a hard time going back to the bigger keyboard and mouse. The hardest part for me was scrolling the internet windows...then I made a discovery. Perhaps I'm just slower than most and am the only one who took forever to find this trick, or maybe it's just a Dell thing, but on my laptop on the touchpad there's a line to the right, and there's a line on the bottom. Drag your finger along those lines and it will scroll your browser windows for you.

I think our husbands must be related--not only does mine do the smacking, bowl-scraping, and channel flipping, but he has managed to pass these talents on to at least two of our four children. Lovely. The stupid shows he likes to settle on are usually about trucks and rebuilding them and...and...and... boring awful stuff that would not only put me to sleep but I may start drooling it could put me out so completely! I usually end up on the laptop while he watches said snooze-inducing material, playing *my* fave game (Spider Solitaire--have we met?). Thank you, Dawn, for all the giggles you've given me. Hugs from NE MO--

Ah, the snoring- the only way I've ever been able to deal with it is pure exhaustion from a new baby. Now that my son is (mostly) sleeping through the night, the snoring from my husband is slowly worming its way back into my consciousness...tradeoffs, I suppose!

I'm a writer, too. One thing I've learned: I cannot work in a room where the TV is on.

I solved my problems by moving our only TV set to my daughters' room (I only have three but they help me to understand and admire you). And you know what, we actually started living in our living room instead of staring at the screen!

I've tried therapy for things like that. All it does is encourage mine to keep doing it. I've found that throwing kooshes and bean bags at him discourages the lipsmacking/bowlscraping. As for the remote control thing, the only way I've been able to combat that is to take physical control of all the remotes in the house. If he wants to change the channel, he either has to walk across the room himself or bellow for our daughter to do it for him.

Lol...my husband gets frustrated with ME over channel flipping during commercials! Why do I do it? Commercials bore me and I dislike being bored. I'm watching TV for entertainment and most commercials just make me think "If they really wanted to throw money away, I'd have taken it" As for the rest of the post, well, all I can say is Men, we cant live without them and its illegal to shoot them! I love my husband dearly but he thinks the shows I watch are stupid. He doesnt understand the whole McDreamy/McSteamy (btw, I pick McSteamy)thing and well, I'm with you, I know all I need to know about history. If I'm interested in learning something I'll take a class. TV should be for entertainment!! Good luck!

I just have to tell you that I read your blog everyday and it gets my morning going.

For some reason I was thinking of you yesterday when I was working out and I couldn't help but laugh at what I was doing, thinking this is probably something you would do.

I didn't have any hand weights to use so I improvised and picked up a candle that was sitting in front of me. Mind you this candle has a Hershey Chocolate sent to it. Talk about a heavenly smell. So everytime was lifting it up, I would sniff it. I really made doing reps a whole lot easier.

Dawn, no worries. I got to the point where I couldn't stand to hear my husband BREATHE. Crunching ice takes me to the point of murder. Also, you haven't cornered the market on procrastination. *points at self * Hang in there.

I had a history professor that said men channel surf because thoughout history they have been the hunters. They still have that need to go out and kill things. His theroy was that they were 'killing off' the bad channels and taking out some aggression. Just one theory - not saying that I agree!

UGH, Men & TV. You should write a book about that and if you don't, maybe I will. Not only does my husband constantly flip thru the channels and finally stop on the most uninteresting thing on, he will leave it on that channel for a period of time. Then, just when I finally get numb to the pain of watching the show about the mating habits of Alaskan wild salmon, boom, he's off again! He'll find another completely off the wall program to stop on and we start the dance all over again. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to put the TV on Lifetime or TLC or some such "chicky" channel, take the good batteries out of the remote, replace them with some known dead batteries. I know he won't get up and walk to the TV to change the channel so I'm in for a good hour or two of entertainment watching him squirm while a Lifetime movie starring Meredith Baxter-Berney about a physically abused wife that just moved next door to a serial killer with her pregnant teenage daughter who just found out she is adopted is on and he's trying so desperately to get this remote to work. Eventually he'll give up and ask me how to fix it but for a while, it'll make for some good giggles.

I do hate the mousepad on a laptop. I can't make it do anything. And you're right about the small keys.I also have the procrastination problem - I had to take Spider Solitaire off my work computer because I "can't play just one."

Hey Dawn, I just switched to a laptop. Forget the touchpad! Go buy a wireless mouse. It just plugs in tho the back and you have a rael mouse. No cords! It is about $30 at Walmart, but worth every penny!!

I'll make a recommendation...don't get a keyboard or a mouse. Learn to use the laptop just as it is. Otherwise, when you travel, you'll be lugging around all kinds of stuff instead of just packing the laptop and going. It'll take time, but once you master the touchpad and keyboard, you'll never go back. When our big desktop dies, and it will someday, I'm replacing it with a laptop-I use one for my job and even though friends told me to buy a mouse and keyboard, I didn't. I carry this thing with me everywhere and now it's just "pack and go". Trust me, you'll be so glad you didn't invest in the other things. I promise you...ONE WEEK and you'll be a pro. Chris

Hey Dawn and Everyone Else,I just wanted to share a totally hilarious picture of my DH it is posted on my blog. Please check it out and feel free to leave a post. Dawn even you should check it out I realize you are totally busy and don't have time to read all the blogs but really this is to funny!!! My blog address is crazymomof2boys.blogspot.comThanks and I hope everyone checks it out. I was not sure if it would put the address at the bottom so I included it in the post just in case.

My husband is/was a big History Channel person, too. We once watched something about the history of Jelly Belly jelly beans. Did you know they have Ear Wax and Vomit flavored Jelly Bellies? I could have lived life without ever knowing that.

My husband is infamous for flipping through the channels...won't check the guide in case something comes up the kids shouldn't see if they're in the room(no dirty, just HBO stuff)...but flip flip flip he does. It's a man DNA thing.

1. Thanks for giving this SAHM something else to waste her time doing other than eating bon bons and watching soaps of course.(and yes I like nailing penguins with snowballs)2. all men snore and surf.......fact of life and you gotta take the good and take the bad ya know.......

3. yay on the laptop! I do hate the mouse pad thingamabob though........

OMG! My sides are hurting! You don't need a therapist, you need another glass of wine! My husband has made me want to stab myself in the eye with an ice pick more times than I can recall! I'm just thankful I haven't followed through with my evil thoughts...I'm not partial to cavity searches! I play Mahjong Titans...the to do list is endless...the only one who knows you didn't finish it is you...be nice to yourself! I hate the evening television time also. Mine starts with my husband shaking the remote at me and saying, "Your daughter didn't turn things off in sequence...now I have to walk over (two strides!) and hit the button...I take a deep breathe and try to remember why I said yes to the proposal. Same clicking as the rest of you described...and then! When he's ready to retire, regardless of what I happen to be doing, he shuts down the house and heads to the bedroom! He's actually turned the lights off while I'm sitting there reading! By the way, for all you women out there...DO NOT buy your mate those sock type slippers that have a leather-type sole...if he has the clicking and chomping tendancies he will surely drag his feet in the most annoying and loud manner (why does it seem to grow louder with your irritation?), breathe louder than the Columbia Gorge winds, snort, slurp whatever he's putting in his mouth, sigh louder than God, and pass gas (from both ends) without skipping a beat! Mine is also of the hovering variety...but that's another story!

Thanks for the good laughs! I read daily and have recommended it to the mothers who bring their children to "Story Time". (I do Children's Programming at our local library)

I have lip-smacking allergy, too!!It sends goosebumps up my spine and I sometimes get FLASHES of myself hauling off and hitting whoever is doing it - we are a NON-SPANKING HOUSEHOLD so this is completely NOT something that would actually happen...I learned it from my dad - he get's ridiculously irrational when he can hear someone's food being chewed!!!I am with ya sista!

I have to disagree with the it's a man thing because I'm not a man and I do it. I cannot leave the channel changer alone when a commercial comes up. I must flip through channels.

Though, with the addition of the on tv guide thing through my cable, I do keep the flipping to through the guide instead of channel to channel, but take away my cable and it's channel flipping time. :)

Well, I can offer a little bit of advice on the laptop. My mom hates the touch pad too, so she bought a wireless mouse. They're really easy to find (I order everything online, even my groceries... I know, sad...), plus there's no cord so your kids won't get tripped up in it and fling the mouse across the room. Only problem is it could get lost... in that case, maybe just stick to the touch pad :P

I believe we are married to the same man. Last night WE watched some stupid show about salmon. Some guys were catching them scraping off something analzing it then putting in some sort of chip to track them. Why do we care about where they are and what they are doing? Then there is the guy that does the dirtest jobs. Ok some of them are neat but come on. Do I really wanna see how they use cow poop for fertizer. how they throw in dead chickens to make it more fertile? Um NO. And he wonders why sometimes I stay downstairs and go through the things I have taped on the DVR just to have ME time and to know what I am watching. If I have to watch one more boxing match or extreme fighting I will scream!!!!

Oh the laptop congrats. I had mine abut a year then my toddlers spilled something on it and now its in the shop not sure if they can fix it yet. Mine still drives me crazy. I do recoomend getting another mouse cause the touch one drives me crazy. Also there are times when I would be typing then touch something and it would go back and erase everything I had typed. GRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr How you fair better.

I have the same hateful disgust for that spoon-clanking-in-the-bowl disorder that most husbands have. My father has it, my husband has it, and his dad has it.

I can't solve many problems, including the slurping that comes after the clanking, but I solved the spoon-clanking. My husband now must eat ice cream with a rubber spatula spoon or I won't buy him ice cream. http://www.amazon.com/Chefn-Switchit-Spoon-Spatula-Huckleberry/dp/B000A385LI/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1196451864&sr=1-11

My husband got a laptop a few years ago for work. He loves it. We used a wireless mouse with it and it was great. Just used the USB for the reciever and when the reciever wasn't in use it would clip under the mouse. No cord and infa red so it would work on anything. It was great untill the kids played with it, that was the end of the receiver and they don't sell spares. I have been stuck with the touch pad ever since and it is a royal pain.

Word of advice: If in the course of life your keyboard gets covered in crumbs or something (it was saw dust for us- don't ask) do not use the vacuum hose to get rid of stuff no matter how tempting. We wanted to save the laptop from getting sawdust inside the keyboard but about one second into the vacuum job we realized our mistake. The keys started flying off the keyboard and disappearing into the vacuum. By the time we got it off we had lost about five keys and after dissecting the vacuum we were still short about two and a half keys. Try telling the IT department at work that the vacuum ate it. That is the last time we try to clean the keyboard by vacuuming.

There are (at least) three common pains in this post that almost all women can relate to:

1) Loud eaters. It takes a lot of effort to eat ice cream loudly, but they all do it. I don't even want to talk about food that can be eaten loudly if no effort is made to be quiet about it (i.e. soup - really, must you slurp?)

2) Idiotic shows. I believe that the Discovery Science channel is only watched by men. What woman in her right mind really wants to watch "Engineering Disasters". zzz Oh sorry, just typing the title of that show made me fall asleep.

3) Channel Flipping. I think that men are hunters by nature. They are always on the hunt for something better. Only men can watch three t.v. shows at a time and be able to follow it (of course they are watching Engineering Disasters, Jacques Cousteau's underwater adventures, and some golf show. Really even 5 minutes of any of those shows are about 5 too many.)

I found your blog through that ebay email going around the internet. YOU ARE FAMOUS NOW!

First time I go to your blog. Read the first article and find myself laughing out loud. You are very very funny.

I'm a husband and my wife, I'm sure feels a lot like you do but its all good. To all you women out there. Just love us. Love us for we we are. Snoring and channel surfing and all. Just love us. We love you.

One time when I was watching tv with my husband I got a phone call. The person asked what I was doing and I said "Watching tv." She asked what I was watching so I replied honestly, "Every channel for two seconds." My husband usually doesn't hear a word I say when he is watching tv but he heard that and he will still make snide remarks about it even though it has been years. I think that channel changing is as close to multi-tasking that some men can get. :)

Congrats on the laptop! Definately remember to shut it everytime you leave the room, my triplets got the "blame game" down pat when I would come back to my laptop and find it missing keys. Needless to say I ended up having to replace my whole keyboard. Good Luck! :)

I'm a work from home (freelancer) mom of five, oldest 9, youngest 1, with a laptop. So tell me, what time do all your kids go to bed? I find myself putting everything off until the kiddos are in bed, which leaves me with about 15 minutes before I collapse from exhaustion to do my work. (I exaggerate..but it feels like 15 minutes.) How do you find the time to write??!?!?!?!?!? I recently started a blog, which I find such a challenge to keep up with, even though I enjoy it...sometimes it creeps into my other responsibilities, like say, feeding my kids. Which leads to my next question: Do we have to feed them every day??

I don't think anyone else has mentioned...it can be a problem once your older children start "borrowing" your lap-top. I'm fed up with coming home to find the touch-pad covered in chocolate and rude and incorrectly spelled messages left on my friend's blog pages in my name,e.g. "You smelle"I haven't found how to deal with it yet...

My husband channel surfs too. Why he does it is beyond me, we only have two channels that come in decently enough to watch (we've chosen to not have statellite tv right now) let's see hmmmm........... PBS or ABC?? PBS or ABC?? rough choice...........commercials are painful..........

Getting a USB mouse like some people suggested is a good idea but I suggest you practice using the touchpad from time to time. Once you get used to it it's not hard at all. After a year and a half using a laptop any time I use the desktop I keep rubbing the bottom of the keyboard looking for the touchpad before I remember I have to pick my hand up and use the stupid mouse. I hate that thing now, the touchpad is so much easier. But when I got the laptop I couldn't even use the touchpad. Took forever to do anything. So just give yourself some time.

Since seeing you on the news I can just picture you in your room and him in the living room. Glad to see you got a laptop, the keys and touch pad thing don't take too long to get used to. I love mine, especially the wireless!

I bought one of those little breakfast in bed tray's ......... not because I expected breakfast in bed...ever..but I too could not get used to the lap top mouse. It also made it so that I could place the laptop cooler under it to keep it from overheating...a lifesaver!

Dawn,I got a laptop for my 50th and love it! You will get use to it! I got a small mouse that plugs in and it helps alot! Can totally relate to the husband issue!!!! I hate to be around him when he eats...........Can't watch TV with him for the same flicking problem (don't know what the hell he would do if they did away with the remote! I know he wouldn't get up and keep changing it manually!!!!) AND....we can't sleep in the same bed or room because of his horrible snoring! I used to pinch his nose to make him stop!!!!

I think my husband is your husband. I can't stand to watch tv with him because i never ever get to finish the show I first started watching. I took the batteries out of the remote the other day and have played dumb when he ask me where some new ones are. At least this way I can watch a whole show.

I had to work on a lap top when i wrote for our local newspaper. One day after doing an entire story on a district track meet, somehow or another I deleted the entire story. After that I plugged in the keyboard and used it. Made life a little easier. Good luck with it. Dede

If you'd like to be with your hubby and not have to listen to what he is listening to or hear all his funny noises get some ear phones and plug it in to your computer. Get all kinds of music you love to listen to put them in your windows media player and listen away. It works wonders for me and I end up bugging my hubby because I start singing to the music. LOL.

I'm happy to hear you finally got your laptop. You'll love it after a while. I swore I would never get me a laptop. The touch pad is to annoying and the keys, like you said, are way to small. But now it is the computer that I use the most. I love it. You can buy a small mouse to use with your laptop if you'd like that better. I have found tho that most of them end up not working good so I've just been using my touch pad and am pretty good on it now.

Dawn,I didn't read the thousands of comments left for you on the husband, channel-changing problem, but I have a question and an idea. As for the commercial dodging, do you have or have you considered TiVo? Tell him to pick his channel or program, go get a snack, come back, rewind the show back to whatever he missed, then on the next commercial break, he can fast forward instead of crazily flipping the channels during the commercials. Secondly, this might be fun....invest in a secret universal remote that only you have and know about (of course, this means you'd have to figure out how to program it to your TV). When he falls asleep, sneak your remote out, flip to the channel you want to watch and enjoy! Or even, better, appear to be really focused on writing behind your laptop screen, then secretly flip the channel or even turn the TV off from your remote and watch him get confused and frustrated! ;) This goes over much better if he has a sense of humor....this known from experience. Good luck and let us know what works!! Thanks for keeping up on the blog, it's great!!

I have a desktop keyboard attached to my laptop (yes, because the dog made me spill beer on the laptop keyboard and now several keys don't work). You can also attach a regular mouse as well. And then you run out of USP things and have to decide which is more important, the mouse or the keyboard when you need to print something or upload photos, or sync your cell phone, etc. ;) We desperately need a new laptop....

At least your husband flips to BORING stuff and then channel surfs from that. MY HUSBAND will be watching something INTERESTING, like about the Roman historian Josephus, and then during commercials flip to something slightly less interesting, and then during commercials flip to a third show that is slightly less interesting then both the first and second shows! And I don't get to finish the first one that I really liked! Ugh. Unless it's football. Or Hockey. Or basketball. Or baseball. Or the Olympics, or people talking about sports, etc. Then he can suddenly handle commercials.....

Goodness, are our husbands related? My DH does the same things! Here's the scene: DH is on the couch in his "spot". The dog is cuddling on his lap while he's eating ice cream from a coffee cup. Clink, clink, clink. Smack, smack, smack. He's watching some boring sports show: you know, highlights of every game ever played this week. Yes, he even keeps updated on HS football (as if he cares). Okay, so said boring sports prgramming goes to commercial. Now is when the already-ridiculously loud TV gets even louder. I beg him to turn it down. He turns it down 2 clicks; not much of an improvement. Now, the surfing starts. Thank goodness we cancelled cable last April--now he has less channels to surf through. So, he starts at channel 2 and makes his painfully slow way up to channel 13. Nothing to watch. Gotta check out Lifetime (69), E! (70), and AMC (71). Nothing there (is there ever?). So, back to said boring sports programming. Whoops--all that surfing and now they're on ANOTHER commercial break. Surfing commences again, but at a slightly faster pace. Then, he decides to hang out on the TV guide channel for a while(which almost never shows the actual channels that we have) while they discuss some obnoxious celebrity like Paris or Britney. Finally, back to boring sports programming. Oh, now Jay Leno is on! Two minutes after his ice cream is finished and about .5 seconds after Jay has started his monologue (which DH insists upon watching--ugh), he's asleep & snoring on the couch (head back, mouth open to catch any flying insects).

The surfing drives me INSANE when he does it while we're watching our shows (or, my shows). I now insist upon having the remote during Grey's Anatomy & Lost. If I didn't, I would probably smother him with a pillow because he made me miss 30 seconds of some very vital plot twist...

I can't stand the sound of someone noisily chewing and swallowing their food, either. Well, I tolerate my kids, but otherwise, I get nauseous. I had a professor in college that used to suck on mints all day during class to fight her raging halitosis. As we were working on a class project, she would come up behind us and watch what we were doing, the whole time sucking away on that candy. I nearly yakked in her classroom more than once. I think I'd almost rather risk the halitosis than listen to her eat her mints.